Palm talks Pre at Web 2.0, announces SDK

At the Web 2. 2001.

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In Wednesday's keynote speech at the Web 2.0 conference, Palm's Michael Abott revealed a bit more of Palm's platform strategy for its upcoming Pre mobile. While rumors of a release date and price for the device didn't pan out, the webOS side of the picture has grown clearer.

The most interesting announcement was the news that older Palm apps will be supported via a "classic" emulation environment provided by third-party developer MotionApps. Palm Classic is essentially an emulator "card" that you can launch, which looks and functions like an older Palm OS device, complete with virtual buttons for calendar, mail, and so on. In keeping with the cloudless, PC-tethered experience of vintage Palm computing, users will load classic apps onto the device by plugging the Pre into a computer and using it as a USB mass storage device.

MotionApps claims that apps that run under Classic on a Pre will run "approximately twice as fast" as native execution on a Treo 700p, which certainly doesn't sound too far-fetched. The ability to run old Palm apps on the Pre will no doubt ease the upgrade transition for individuals and businesses, but I worry about what it will do for the device's battery life.

Speaking of battery life, I asked Palm's Paul Cousineau, director of product management for webOS, about gaming on the Pre. Cousineau told me that this had been a common question from journalists, given that GDC was just last week, and that Palm does see Pre as a platform for casual, social gaming. He emphasized the "casual" and "social" parts, and I didn't press him about granting developers closer access to the underlying hardware.

The clear message was that Pre is a mobile Web device, and that games which run in a browser will make their way to the Pre. In that context, he mentioned in passing the in-browser version of Quake 3 as an example of the Web-based gaming wave that Pre wants to ride. (I'd also add the new Legends of Zork as another good example of the web gaming trend.)

For the Palm PR folks, the big news yesterday was the public availability of the Mojo SDK, which will let developers start working on Pre projects immediately. Palm told me that they are admitting developers in waves as the company scales its resources to match developer demand. If you want access, you'll have to fill out an application, but Palm stressed that the program is pretty open.

Palm also announced a developer-facing cloud service, the XMPP-based Mojo Messaging Service. The idea behind this is that it should be complementary with the array of other cloud services supported on the device—from Google, Amazon, and others—so that developers have the flexibility to do messaging and persistence without relying on a third party.